Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Wed, 01 Oct 2003
More thoughts on open source and foundations
It turns out that Dave Stutz actually published two essays recently. The second one is a report on the HBS/Sloan symposium on free and open source. The big thing from that report is the issue of patent infringement. I agree that free/open source communities need to be spending a lot of effort on strategies for this. One thing that may need to happen is for open source communities to file patents of their own. This of course requires money and other kinds of support, which takes me back to the foundation/public charity model for supporting open source.
The various open source foundations work in different ways. I'll talk about the Apache Software Foundation, since I know the most about it. The ASF exists to provide resources to its projects, which includes obvious stuff like servers and bandwidth. We also have a legal defense fund (should we ever need it), and the members of the Foundation also benefit from legal protection in the event of legal action against the foundation. That legal protection, and the value of the Apache brand, are two of the biggest reasons that projects should be interested in becoming ASF projects.
I think that the various foundations need to start acting more like non-profits that sponsor scientific research, and provide the kind of legal, IP, and financial support that is necessary for open source development to flourish. That's in addition to servers and bandwidth. Today in the OSAF Chandler IRC, the OSAF folks announced that they have received a $2.75M grant from the Mellon Foundation. I expect that the Mozilla Foundation may start to pursue this sort of funding.
The papers from the HBS/Sloan workshop can be obtained via this
page.
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2 Comments |
Not all foundations are structured the same, and I think that we're still in the experimental stage as far as all the various foundations are concerned.
If you have an idea for an alternate model, the world is all ears...
Posted by Ted Leung at Tue Oct 7 23:01:13 2003
If you have an idea for an alternate model, the world is all ears...
Posted by Ted Leung at Tue Oct 7 23:01:13 2003
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